Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 161

Another Step Toward El Chapo’s Extradition

Mexico’s Foreign Ministry gave the green light on Friday for the head of the Sinaloa drug cartel, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, to be extradited to the U.S.

This means all the conditions for Guzmán’s extradition met the standards agreed upon by the U.S. and Mexico. Two Mexican judges had already signed off on his extradition to California and Texas, where he’s charged with drug and murder crimes. The Mexican Foreign Ministry also said the U.S. has guaranteed Guzmán will not face the death penalty.

Referring to him as “the capo,” meaning cartel boss, the Mexican newspaper, El Universal, reported (translated from Spanish):

The boss will be prosecuted before the Federal District Court for the Western District of Texas, on charges of conspiracy … organized crime, weapons possession, murder and money laundering.

Likewise, before the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of California, on the charge of association to import and possess with the intent to distribute cocaine …  

Guzmán’s lawyers now have 30 days to appeal the decision.

Guzmán, the notorious drug lord, led the Sinaloa Cartel for decades. He’s been arrested and later escaped twice, once in 2001, and again last year from the high-security Altiplano Prison, the same one where he was kept until earlier this month. On May 7, the government transferred Guzmán to a smaller facility in Ciudad Juarez, near the Texas border. They denied this was a precursor to extradition––proximity to the U.S. would not have much to do with the process. Instead, the Mexican government said it was done to make improvements to the Altiplano Prison.

In all, Guzmán faces charges and possible extradition from seven different U.S. jurisdictions.

A Shooting Near the White House

Updated on May 20 at 5:15 p.m. ET

An armed man approaching a White House checkpoint with a gun Friday afternoon was shot by a Secret Service agent after he ignored several orders to drop the weapon, the U.S. Secret Service said in a statement.

The incident prompted a lockdown of the White House that was later lifted. President Obama was not in the compound at the time of the incident, and Vice President Joe Biden, who was, was in a secure location.

The gunman has not been identified, but is in a critical condition, D.C. Fire and EMS said.

Our earlier updates follow:

4:22 p.m. ET

The Secret Service said:

The Secret Service is confirming a police involved shooting near the @WhiteHouse complex. All Secret Service protectees are safe.

— U.S. Secret Service (@SecretService) May 20, 2016

A White House official said: No one within or associated with the White House was injured, and everyone in the White House was safe and accounted for. Obama was made aware of the situation.

4:07 p.m. ET

The White House lockdown was lifted a little after 4 p.m.

Lockdown of WH grounds lifted following shooting incident at security checkpoint on perimeter of the WH compound.

— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) May 20, 2016

Updated on May 20 at 4:03 p.m. ET

NBC and CNN both reported that a person pulled a gun at a White House checkpoint and was shot by the Secret Service. D.C. Fire and EMS said the person is suffering critical injuries.  

Updated on May 20 at 3:54 p.m. ET

The shooting occurred at 17th and E Streets, Northwest, D.C. Fire and EMS said.

UPDATE: Shooting at 17th and E Sts NW - 1pt transported with critical injuries to a local hospital #dctraffic

— DC Fire and EMS (@dcfireems) May 20, 2016

Nearby roads have been closed as a precaution.

3:50 p.m. ET

Vice President Joe Biden was in the complex at the time of the incident, but is “secure,” his representative told ABC News.  Obama was golfing at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, according to the White House press pool.

3:41 p.m. ET

Both CNN and NBC are reporting that a person is down. Here’s CNN:

Our Peter Morris reports suspect who allegedly opened fire on White House complex is down and in custody, from law enforcement source

— Steve Brusk (@stevebruskCNN) May 20, 2016

3:35 p.m. ET

The U.S. Park Police tweeted:

Shooting on W. Executive Dr. PIO en route to 17th and Pennsylvania

— USPPNEWS (@usparkpolicepio) May 20, 2016

FC Barcelona’s Reclaimed Flags

Just two days before the Copa del Rey final in Madrid, a Spanish judge overturned a ban on fans bringing flags that represent Catalan independence to the soccer game.

Madrid authorities, sensitive to Catalonia’s plans to break away from Spain by 2017, had previously banned the Estelada flag from the Copa del Rey, or King’s Cup, arguing it would lead to a politically charged atmosphere. The red- and yellow-striped flag with a white star and blue triangle had been a symbol for the independence movement and a favorite of FC Barcelona fans, who will watch their team face off against Sevilla on Sunday.

The club, located in the Catalan capital, appealed the decision, successfully arguing for free speech. As The New York Times reports:

The ban had outraged Catalonia’s leading politicians, who vowed not to attend the match at Vicente Calderón Stadium in Madrid to protest what they described as a blatant attack on freedom of expression. After the judge’s decision on Friday, however, Carles Puigdemont, head of the Catalan regional government, said he would go to Madrid to watch the match.

The judge rejected the public prosecutor’s argument that waving a politically charged Catalan flag could lead to serious public disturbances, or even violence.

In a statement, FC Barcelona said it was satisfied with the decision, but expressed “its concern about the reoccurrence of situations like the one on Wednesday, and which are an affront to the freedom of expression, and do nothing to benefit what has always been a celebration of football and sport.”

Now, the 19,000 expected Barcelona fans will be able to wave their Estelada flags, while also likely jeering and whistling at the Spanish national anthem and King Felipe VI, as they did at last year’s Copa del Rey.

The Record-Setting Climb Up Everest, Set by a Convenience-Store Cashier

A Nepalese woman who lives in Connecticut climbed to the summit of Mount Everest on Friday, and broke the record (previously held by her) for the most ascents by a female of the world’s highest peak.

Lhakpa Sherpa had previously climbed Everest six times between 2000 and 2006, but she is little known, even in the climbing world. Even more surprising is the world’s most successful female climber works at a 7-Eleven in West Hartford to get by. A fascinating profile from Outside magazine, written before she summited the mountain Friday, reads:

In 2000, she became the first Nepalese woman to summit Everest and make it back down alive. In 2010, she made it to camp 3 on K2 and spent two days there before the weather forced her to descend.

Yet few people are aware of her mountaineering exploits. The Wikipedia page that catalogs Everest records contains listings as specific as “first twins to climb Mount Everest together,” but there’s no mention of Lhakpa. A 2013 ESPN.com article on five-time Everest summiter Melissa Arnot mentioned Lhakpa as an aside, calling Arnot “either the most accomplished female Everest climber ever, or the most accomplished non-Sherpa woman. (A Nepali named Lhakpa Sherpa is said to have from four to six Everest summits.)”

Sherpa is 42 years old, and she reached the 29,000-foot peak Friday with 17 others.

Part of her obscurity likely comes from the climbing industry’s relative disregard for her community’s accomplishments. She is part of the Sherpa ethnic group in the Himalayan mountains. The name has three uses: as an ethnic group; as a job, because these people often works as “sherpas,” carrying climbing gear and prepping routes; and as a last name. Many times, as the Outside profile pointed out, their accomplishments are not recognized individually, but as a collective.

The Atlantic's Week in Culture

Don’t Miss

The Future Is Almost Now — Elizabeth Alsop on how in popular culture, science-fiction stories look more like the real world than ever before.

Film

Columbia Pictures and Rovio Animation Ltd.

Party Fowl: The Angry Birds Movie Is an Allegory, Right? — Megan Garber on how the film must be a feather-light metaphor for our times.

The Nice Guys: An Intoxicating Comic Noir — Christopher Orr on how Shane Black’s latest film is uneven at times, but standout performances from Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe help keep it a fun ride.

Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising Is a Surprisingly Self-Aware Sequel — David Sims on how the follow-up to Seth Rogen and Zac Efron’s 2014 frat comedy has some smart things to say about gender roles.

The Ongoing Outcry Against the Ghostbusters Remake — David Sims on how a subset of fans are protesting the new movie ahead of its July release, with many speciously insisting their complaints have nothing to do with its female leads.

Television

Logo

The Fierceness of ‘Femme, Fat, and Asian’ — Spencer Kornhaber interviews C. Winter Han, the author of a book on Asian American gay men, who analyzes the RuPaul’s Drag Race fan favorite Kim Chi.

RuPaul’s Drag Race and the Art of Self Love — Manuel Betancourt on how the reality show’s emphasis on the survival stories of its contestants reveals that performance can be empowering.

The Weird, Sweet Comedy of Lady Dynamite — David Sims on how Maria Bamford’s autobiographical series on Netflix manages to break the fourth wall in new and unusual ways.

A New Age of Animation — Kate Torgovnick May reports on how many animated series in the U.S. are hand-drawn in South Korea, but the country’s recent transition to digital tools could spur a transformation in American television.

Bully for Who? — Megan Garber on how Megyn Kelly’s interview of Donald Trump made it clear once again: The definition of “bullying” has expanded almost to the point of meaninglessness.

The Night Manager: From the BBC With Love — Sophie Gilbert on the imported British miniseries, both a dazzling six-part spy story and a James Bond audition tape for its star, Tom Hiddleston.

Network TV’s Future Is All About the Past — David Sims on how reboots, spinoffs, and sequels dominate the small screen next season.

Game of Thrones: Burning Down the Hut — Three Atlantic staffers discuss “Book of the Stranger,” the fourth episode of the sixth season.

Music

Robb D. Cohen / AP

Chance the Rapper and the Lessons of Childhood — Spencer Kornhaber on how the uplifting Coloring Book makes profound use of Millennial nostalgia.

Whitney Houston and the Holographic Hell to Come — Spencer Kornhaber on how the debut of the digitized diva on The Voice was scrapped for not looking good enough—an unfortunately temporary problem.

How Pet Sounds Invented the Modern Pop Album — Jason Guriel on how Brian Wilson’s Beach Boys masterpiece paved the way for auteurs like Kanye West and anticipated the rise of the producer.

The Stakes of #FreeKesha, Clarified — Spencer Kornhaber on how even if she doesn’t have to record with Dr. Luke anymore, his company still can do things like stop her from performing at the Billboard Awards.

Without Jazz and Blues, There’s No Americana — David A. Graham on how the saxophonist J.D. Allen’s new record makes the case that any genre that pretends to represent the full scope of U.S. culture can’t ignore black music.

Books

Doug McLean

Art Should Be Uncomfortable — Joe Fassler interviews the writer Mark Haddon, for whom Miles Davis’s seminal jazz album Bitches Brew is a reminder of the beauty and power of challenging works.

Sports

Reuters

The Myth of the Perfectly Officiated Game — Robert O’Connell on how better replay technology and refereeing rules don’t necessarily make sports any less messy, or fair.

Facing Baseball’s Unwritten Rules — Doug Glanville on how it’s time for the game to think seriously about the best way to police itself.

Water, Water Still Is Scarce, Except for California's Rich

El Niño came to California, and now the state has been saved of its five-year drought––or at least some parts have. In the north, the boats in Lake Oroville and Lake Shasta no longer run the risk of beaching themselves on lake beds that had started to looked like open-pit mines of rock. But in the south, in San Diego, Riverside, Los Angeles, and the many small towns surrounding, it’s another dry summer, as more than 70 percent of the California is still in severe drought.

That’s the duality Governor Jerry Brown mentioned when he asked the state’s water-regulatory board 10 days ago to end statewide water restrictions. On Wednesday, the board listened, and voted 4-0 to pass Brown’s proposal. Under the new rules, each district will set its own regulation limits. The state has said it will audit the district’s past water use to make sure its goals are in line, but it will do this through a system it calls “trust, but verify,” which hasn’t imbued much confidence for water-conservationists who want the statewide mandate to stay.

The ruling was an abrupt change from just a year ago, when Brown ordered all districts and the 411 water suppliers to collectively cut 25 percent of water use. For a year, car-obsessed L.A. went without a wash. Suburban lawns turned sallow, then brown, until finally people gave up and spray-painted their grass gree. Then this March, parts of the state had an unusually large amount of rainfall, enough to restore aquifers to near-normal levels.

The State Water Resources Control Board’s recent ruling to let each district decide its own conservation limits is supposed to let those communities that saw lots of rain this spring relax and stop worrying about conserving water, while many of the communities in southern California must continue to go without. Except, not everyone went without water in the first place, and the new rule for cities to self-regulate has people worried that certain localities will more or less opt out. That’s because some people remember that while the land in Central Valley sunk into its dried up wells, and the poor in the San Joaquin Valley suffered empty taps and toilets that didn’t flush, some wealthy neighborhoods filled their pools a little higher and asked, What drought?

One popular offender was the “Wet Prince of Bel-Air,” an unnamed resident of the posh Los Angeles neighborhood. A study from University of California, Los Angeles, found the city’s wealthy regularly use three times as much water as the less-affluent, but the “Wet Prince” took this to an absurdity. This single homeowner consumed 11.8 million gallons of water in one year. That’s enough for 90 homes. Bel-Air is in the Los Angeles water district, so while the rest of the city tightened its taps, or even looked to Australia for water-cutting techniques, the Wet Prince seemed to have turned up every faucet. A posse of angered drought-minders patrolled Bel-Air, and the news media made a mad search to learn who this homeowner was. Newspapers demanded the water agencies release the offender’s name, as well as those of top water-wasters.

Nothing came of it, and the water supplier refused to reveal the homeowner’s identity. But the “Wet Prince” was not alone. Just north of San Diego, in the pastoral and faux-farm community of Rancho Santa Fe, Marty and Pamela Wygod, horse racers, owners of almost 100 acres, and an infinity pool, had pumped nearly 14 million gallons by the end of 2014. And that was a drastic reduction in their water use. In 2003, the WebMD Health Corporation chairman and his wife used 57 million gallons, and in 2013 they used 28 million gallons. From those highs, the Wygods had cut down their use during the drought, and said their 50 percent decrease from the past year was an effort to “set the best example in the state.”

At least the Wygods tried. In April 2014, when Governor Brown announced the statewide mandatory water cuts, Rancho Santa Fe’s water usage increased 9 percent. The New York Times visited the gated community in November 2014, and the reporter found an eden of healthy and perky putting greens. The Times wrote:

The lawns and horse pastures here offer a stark reminder that, although drought has blanketed the entire state, the burdens of the dry reservoirs have hardly been spread evenly.

Then last June, The Washington Post visited, and the strain of state-forced water cuts seemed to have angered the community. Steve Yuhas, a resident and conservative radio host, posted on Facebook that people “should not be forced to live on property with brown lawns, golf on brown courses or apologize for wanting their gardens to be beautiful. We pay significant property taxes based on where we live.” Then he told the Post in an interview, “And, no, we’re not all equal when it comes to water.”

“What are we supposed to do,” interior designer, Gay Butler, who was out for a horseback ride, asked the Post reporter, “just have dirt around our house on four acres?"

In Beverly Hills, the story was much the same: David Geffen, the film studio executive, used 27,000 gallons of water each day for two months last summer––during the mandated regulations––and comedian Amy Poehler received a notice for overusing, too. All of Beverly Hills wasted so much water and refused to self-regulate so often that in October 2015, the water board fined the city $61,000. As the Los Angeles Times reported, the only tact that seemed to get Beverly Hills to cut its use was public shaming.

But with the new regulations announced this week comes a new fear: Will cities with enough residents who ignore the water restrictions opt out of conservation efforts?

That was the question Sara Aminzadeh, executive director of California Coastkeeper Alliance, a water conservation organization, asked the Los Angeles Times after the state announced the new rules. When it comes time for wealthier water districts like Palo Alto, Rancho Santa Fe, or Beverly Hills to self-regulate, “What do we think Beverly Hills is going to be proposing in terms of conservation?”

The Weird, Sweet Comedy of Lady Dynamite

On paper, Lady Dynamite fits the same mold as countless other self-referential shows about a comedian’s life, from Seinfeld to Curb Your Enthusiasm to Louie, blending autobiographical stories with heightened sitcom material and an impressive cavalcade of guests. But the show’s star Maria Bamford and its co-creators Mitch Hurwitz and Pam Brady have taken that well-worn formula and turned it into a uniquely bizarre comedy for Netflix—one that manages to tap into dark, emotional territory while remaining a cheerful, unconventional delight.

Bamford has explored the medium of stand-up comedy in fascinating ways throughout her career. In her act, she’s long been candid about her struggles with depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder, but she also wrings laughs from her heartfelt impressions of her family and friends from childhood, which she fleshed out in her cult web series The Maria Bamford Show. Her wonderful 2012 stand-up film The Special Special Special saw her perform for an audience of two: her parents. Lady Dynamite plays with form in a similar way, breaking the fourth wall when it needs to, but always maintaining its focus on its star—who keeps one foot in the real world and her tough personal story, and the other in the laugh-out-loud comedy show she’s trying to deliver.

Lady Dynamite begins with Bamford caught in the reverie of a ’70s-style hair commercial before cutting sharply between various points in time—her past as an up-and-coming comedy star in Hollywood; her recovery at a mental-health clinic in her hometown of Duluth, Minnesota, surrounded by her (mostly) supportive family; and her new life back in L.A. in the present day, trying to avoid old pitfalls. The effect is a strange, staccato narrative rhythm that takes a little while to adjust to (but one that Bamford-as-herself is keenly aware of).

In the first episode, Bamford wonders whether her return to stand-up should be part of the series, as it is for so many similar autobiographical comedies, worrying that it won’t fit with the many storytelling elements already present. Her longtime friend Patton Oswalt, ostensibly playing a bike cop in one scene, suddenly breaks character and starts counseling her against the move, warning that it’s something so many comedians have tried that it can no longer be effective. As a brick wall background is set up behind them for a future scene, Oswalt tuts that “Louis [C.K.] is going to throw a fit.” Later, the comedian John Mulaney (who tried the same autobiographical stand-up gimmick on his Fox sitcom Mulaney, only to earn unfair comparisons to Seinfeld), shows up as extra and squints disapprovingly.

Lady Dynamite taps into dark, emotional territory while staying a cheerful, unconventional delight.

This kind of self-referentiality can be tough for a comedy to pull off, but Bamford has a pro in her corner: Hurwitz, best known as the creator of Arrested Development and a seasoned sitcom writer with decades of genre-busting work under his belt. In the ’90s, he helped define the metatextual sitcom with his work on The John Laroquette Show, which played with that star’s grumpy persona in comedy scenarios that veered wildly between light and dark. Hurwitz collaborated on that series with Brady, who later became a key contributor to South Park before working on Lady Dynamite with him.

Together, they’ve found an anarchic format for Bamford that doesn’t stifle her voice, but instead plays off it in unusual ways. An ongoing theme in Lady Dynamite is Bamford’s serial passivity—a result of her polite upbringing and own internal anxieties—which helps unify the show despite its time-skipping structure. As we lurch between her sunny Hollywood past, bleak Minnesota recovery, and uneasy show-biz future, we see how Bamford’s lack of confidence became her undoing, and the stakes for the series become clear: whether she can confront (and change) her own worst habits. If she fails, it’s still funny, but whenever she succeeds, it feels especially triumphant.

Bamford takes advantage of her years in Hollywood to bring together a deep bench of supporting actors, a necessary shift from the glory days of her web series (where she played basically every character herself). Fred Melamed is Maria’s wonderfully obsequious, incompetent manager; Ana Gasteyer is an obnoxious Hollywood agent from Bamford’s past; and Mary Kay Place and Ed Begley Jr. turn in subtle, rewardingly sweet performances as her often-confused parents.

More than anything, Lady Dynamite shows what a boon Netflix has been to the world of alternative comedy, even more so than the TV drama. Its loose formatting and lack of ad breaks lets Hurwitz, Brady, and Bamford experiment with the form however they see fit (episode running times range between 25 and 35 minutes), while the autobiographical story fits well with the binge-watch model (the first season consists of 12 episodes, four of which were provided to critics). The show is a singular accomplishment that asks its viewers to buy in from its first dream sequence on—but for those who do, the ensuing laughs make it quickly worth the investment.

Why Is Turkey Temporarily Lifting Immunity for Lawmakers?

Turkey’s parliament on Friday passed a bill that would temporarily strip lawmakers of their immunity from prosecution—a move critics say targets Kurdish lawmakers and other critics of the government.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told supporters the measure would get rid of “guilty lawmakers” in parliament. It could also allow Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to go after political opponents and expel lawmakers from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), as well as other political opponents.

According to The Wall Street Journal, this temporary change to the country’s constitution would speed up prosecution of opposition parties.

Turkish law grants members of parliament full immunity from prosecution. The bill temporarily amends the constitution to strip immunity from 138 lawmakers to allow a speedy prosecution.

These lawmakers, which include 27 AKP party members and dozens of members from the secular Republican People’s Party, are being investigated in over 650 cases.

Turkish law allows lawmakers’ immunity to be rescinded via a regular parliamentary debate and vote on each alleged crime. Friday’s measure bypasses such a lengthy procedure, which given the volume of allegations could have taken years. In 1994, parliamentarians enacted this procedure against four deputies of a now-defunct pro-Kurdish party on charges of separatist activities in connection with the PKK.

Kurdish lawmakers say the charges are trumped-up, and this new law would allow Erdogan to push them out of parliament and tighten his grip on power. HDP leaders called the move undemocratic and said they would challenge it in Turkey’s top court.

Oklahoma's Quixotic Abortion Bill

The Oklahoma Senate passed a bill Thursday that would make it a felony for physicians to perform abortions in the state, a direct violation of Roe v. Wade that is virtually guaranteed to be struck down by the courts.

State lawmakers approved Senate Bill 1552, which would impose a one- to three-year prison sentence for performing an abortion, by a 33-12 vote. The Oklahoma House previously passed the legislation in April by a 59-9 vote.

Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin’s office has not indicated whether she would sign or veto the bill. “The governor will withhold comment on that bill, as she does on most bills, until she and her staff have had a chance to review it,” Fallin spokesman Michael McNutt told the Washington Post.

SB 1552 is the most drastic effort yet by Oklahoma lawmakers to curtail legal abortion. Previous attempts, however, often failed to survive judicial scrutiny. The Associated Press has more:

Nearly every year, Oklahoma lawmakers have passed bills imposing new restrictions on abortions, but many of those laws have never taken effect. In all, eight of the state's separate anti-abortion measures have been challenged in court as unconstitutional in the last five years.

In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case over an overturned Oklahoma law that would have required women to view of an ultrasound of her fetus before an abortion is performed. That same year, the Oklahoma Supreme Court struck down a law that would have effectively banned all drug-induced abortions in the state.

In 2014, the state Legislature approved a law requiring abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals, but a challenge is pending before the Oklahoma Supreme Court.

With SB 1552, anti-abortion legislators anticipated the inevitable legal fight. State Senator Nathan Dahm, the bill’s author, told reporters he hoped the bill would lead the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Oklahoma’s legislation joins a bevy of anti-abortion bills passed by Republican-led state legislatures in recent years. According to the Center for Reproductive Freedom, which supports abortion rights, state lawmakers passed 47 new laws restricting abortion and proposed 400 more in 2015.

In February, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt, which challenges Texas’s restrictions on abortion clinics. As my colleague Garrett Epps noted then, a ruling in favor of the restrictions could force 32 of the state’s 40 clinics to close and leave nearly 1 million Texas women of reproductive age more than 150 miles from the remaining ones. The Court’s decision is expected in June.

Why Spain Banned This Flag From a Soccer Game

In Spain, soccer is more than just a sport. Over the past century, political battles have been fought on the pitch, including, most notably, over Catalonia’s independence movement.

Police in Madrid have been ordered to search FC Barcelona fans this Sunday night for Estelada flags that are used by Catalan separatists to show their support of an independent state. The yellow- and red-striped flag with a white star and blue triangle is an “inflammatory symbol,” according to Spanish government officials, who told The Telegraph the match between Barcelona and Sevilla at the Copa del Rey, or King’s Cup, in Madrid “must not be made a scene of political struggle.”

FC Barcelona, located in the capital of Catalonia, was outraged by the order, saying in a statement the move would impede the free speech of its 19,000 fans who will attend the match. The club continues:

FC Barcelona considers the decision to be an attack on the freedom of expression, the fundamental right of each and every individual to express their ideas and opinions freely and without censorship, a right which is recognised in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. FC Barcelona has always defended, and will continue to defend, the freedom of expression of all its members and fans, who have always displayed a high level of civility and respect.

To add to what is sure to be a heated match in Madrid, Spain’s King Felipe VI will be there. At last year’s Copa del Rey, Barcelona fans jeered and whistled at both the Spanish national anthem and the king. The club was also fined $78,000 by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) later in October for flying the Estelada at a Champions League match.

Banning the separatist symbol of the independence movement goes beyond sports. Last week, the Spanish government banned the flag from being displayed at government buildings during national elections scheduled for June 26. After the announcement, Catalan officials invited citizens to fly the Estelada flag at their homes.

Spain is sensitive to the movement. In November, Catalan lawmakers voted to break away from Spain by 2017, an action that Spanish officials said they would block. As Time explains, secession of the region of 7.5 million people could have massive implications for all of Spain:

Catalonia is arguably Spain’s most powerful economic region, making up just 16% of the country’s population while providing a fifth of the country’s economy. Though Catalonia has roots as an independent state dating back to the 11th century, it has long been a part of Spain, while maintaining its own language, culture, cuisine, and semi-autonomous government.

Since the soccer club’s founding in 1899, FC Barcelona has been rooted in Catalan pride and the region’s desire for independence. During the 1910s in the early years of the club, Catalan was the team’s official language. In one match, in 1925, during the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera, fans responded to the Spanish national anthem with jeers and whistles. The government responded by shutting the stadium down for six months.

On April 6, 1936, troops under the command of Francisco Franco, who would later become the country’s fascist dictator for nearly 40 years, arrested Josep Sunyol, the club president and Catalan nationalist leader, just north of Madrid, and shot and killed him on the spot. The club views his death as one the most pivotal moments in its history.

In the late 1930s, in the midst of the Spanish Civil War, the government banned the display of the Estelada flag at games, and forced the club to remove the flag from its crest and change its official language from Catalan to Spanish. Faced with the threat of retribution from the government, some team members took refuge in South America.

Under his regime, Franco further politicized soccer in Spain, which the blog Outside of the Boot describes:

[Franco] adopted the capital’s biggest club, Real Madrid to make it a perfect personification of his fascist leadership. He shrewdly observed that by supporting Real Madrid, he would put the operations of FC Barcelona, a symbol of Catalonian pride and honour, out of articulation. Barca, in turn, would become the symbol of republican resistance, against Franco’s oppressive regime and its oppression of the Catalan culture.

That pressure was most apparent in 1943 during the semifinals of the Copa del Generalisimo, today called Copa del Rey, when Real Madrid beat Barcelona 11-1 in what is still considered a controversial match. According to The Guardian:

Then on the day of the match, to make sure Barça’s players got the centralist message, Spain’s director of state security visited their dressing room just before kick-off. Packing a loaded gun—though some Madridistas question the packed piece—he quietly reminded the visitors that “you are only playing because of the generosity of the regime that has forgiven you for your lack of patriotism.” A singular inspirational team talk having been delivered, the following kickabout was only ever going to end one way. Real scored early, then made it two on the half-hour, whereupon Barça, fearing lethal consequences, properly capitulated; it was 8-0 to Madrid by halftime. The second half was a relative non-event, the game ending 11-1.

The composition of the team today is far different from the FC Barcelona of that era. Soccer is a multibillion global sport, and the team is one of the sport’s richest. Most of its best players are now from Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and elsewhere, though a handful is Catalan. Having said that, among Barça fans, Madrid still represents the the oppression of the Franco years.  The ban on the Estelada flag for Sunday’s Copa Del Ray final is likely just another example of that.